Reminiscing About Horses and Hot Wire

I grew up in the boonies of western Arizona. A lot of my friends had horses, and frankly, I was friends with a couple of them only because they had horses. One of them, Dean, was actually a bully who liked to pick on my younger brother. I was conflicted when I hung out with him, because I loved my brother, but Dean was always nice to me, and heck, he had a horse!

So one day when I was about 10 or 11, we were taking turns riding Dean’s horse in a round pen. It was Dean’s turn, and I was standing against the fence inside the ring. Just as he rode by, I reached out and patted the horse’s rump. By a curious (and completely accidental) coincidence, I also reached behind me at the same time to lean on the fence. As luck would have it, the round pen was ringed with electric fence, what we called hot wire. That’s what I grabbed. The jolt went through me, through the horse, right to Dean. Horse bucked, Dean fell off (he was riding bareback). He was mad, I was sorry…